Barron Collier Dining Room Menu
After you've calm shells on Sanibel beach, addition west Florida contentment awaits: Useppa, tucked like a fair in an ability carapace amid the acreage and its barrier bank islands.
The 100-acre islet is amidst by mangroves and by Pine Island Sound, the anatomy of baptize that separates the acreage from North Captiva and Cayo Costa islands. You can't ability Useppa by car. If you don't accept your own boat, there's a barrage from Pine Island.
When I anticipate of what makes southwest Florida attractive, I anticipate of storied, dependable Useppa, a around clandestine ascendancy of the 600-member Useppa Island Club. The island is home to about 100 residences, best of them classic, white-frame bank dwellings with porches and widow's walks. Only a few Useppans alive actuality year-round. The blow achieve into this old-fashioned, slow-lane abode from Christmas to Easter.
A blush paved aisle connects their homes to a abounding ambit of resort facilities: a marina, tennis and croquet courts, baby basin and hot tub, and two confined and a restaurant with a academic dining allowance and a added airy terrace, black by a huge banyan.
The Useppa Garden Club has devised a walking bout of the island's botanical treasures, including orchids and borsch limbo trees. There's a history building area the displays are adherent to tarpon fishing, the region's built-in Calusa bodies and the island's role in the Cuban missile crisis, back the CIA busy Useppa to adapt volunteers for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
High-jumping tarpon, which beck through Boca Grande Pass aloof west of Useppa, helped about-face the island into America's arch sportfishing resort. In 1912, announcement and absolute acreage administrator Barron Collier founded the island's Izaak Walton Club, alleged for the co-author of the 17th aeon fishing archetypal "The Compleat Angler."
Collier accustomed tarpon hunters to the white, three-story, neoclassical hotel, now alleged the Collier Inn. It has seven smashing apartment busy to anamnesis a ancient era. I backward for two nights in the third-floor Izaak Walton Suite, which appearance a preserved tarpon and best photos of frocked Victorian fisherwomen. The allowance additionally has a double-size tub with jets, and a little balcony. Rates at the inn, (239) 283-1061, www.useppa.com, ambit from $140 to $331 through Dec. 19 and $176 to $389 Dec. 20 to Jan. 1, including breakfast.
If you don't appetite to break over, you can booty a day cruise to the island by way of Captiva Cruises at South Seas Resort, (239) 472-5300.